Sperm Wars

by Robin Baker

  There, the girl watched and waited while the woman knelt by his head and bent forward to kiss him on the lips. He jumped, then jumped again when the girl kissed his genitals. As the two women kissed and stroked his body, every part of him relaxed – except one. And that grew even harder. After a few minutes, the girl sat astride his groin, massaging his body with her hands and gently massaging his penis with her vaginal lips.

  By this time, the other four men were awake. At first, they feigned an air of casual disinterest. Watching the women’s antics only intermittently, they resumed their smoking and drinking, passing an occasional good-humoured comment on the stranger’s progress. Eventually, however, their erections betrayed their true feelings.

  The girl, still sitting astride her prey, finally initiated intercourse with him. No stranger to this position, she slowly but expertly rose and fell as if impaled on his erect penis. As she did so, her friend bent further forward to lick his nipples, resting one of her breasts on his face in the process. Her movement lifted her bottom in the air as if in display to the man sitting behind her. Throwing down his cigarette, he proclaimed he could stand it no longer. He moved quickly across to the woman and, with the minimum of foreplay, entered her from behind. For a while, the remaining three men watched, then moved closer to await their turn.

  Because of their positions, the two women were facing each other. If they had bent forward, they could have kissed. But they didn’t. Instead, as intercourse proceeded, they looked into each other’s eyes, sharing each other’s mounting sensations. The girl was disappointed when, just as she was building to a climax, the stranger ejaculated inside her too soon and began to fade.

  Having been left high on a plateau of sexual excitement, she moved off him and in one continuous movement sat astride the man lying next to her. Hardly had he penetrated her than she climaxed. He carried on thrusting, but once she stopped cooperating after her orgasm his movements became awkward. Thrusting as best he could, he was finding it difficult to build up to ejaculation. He was not helped by the man next to them who, waiting for his turn, complained he was taking too long. He was helped even less when the man put his hands round the girl’s waist and tickled her ribs, making her laugh. Concentrating hard, his thrusting eventually brought him to the brink of ejaculation. Then, at the very last moment, he felt the girl being pushed to one side and his penis slipping out of her vagina. Still laughing, she fell on to her back on the sand and the other man collapsed on top of her.

  The prostrate man was more than a little irritated. After all his hard work, all he had managed was to ejaculate on to his stomach. His annoyance grew when, with the girl still laughing, the man who had spoiled his fun entered her and began a long but gentle intercourse. He did his best to interfere in return, but the missionary position adopted by his usurper allowed him to resist being pushed off, especially once the girl wrapped her legs around him.

  While the girl’s third lover in ten minutes was slowly building to his climax, the events around her became a blur, even after she had stopped laughing. She dimly registered the previous man’s attempts to interfere – and the fact that the other woman was still on all fours having sex with the same man. The one man who had not yet had intercourse seemed to be urging him to get off. He was refusing, saying he hadn’t finished. Briefly, voices became raised. When her most recent lover had eventually inseminated her and removed himself, the last, frustrated, man left the other couple and moved over to her. She protested a little as he lay down on top of her and opened her legs, but he took no notice. Once inside her he was vigorous to the point of aggressive. Resigned to her situation, the girl at first didn’t mind his thrusting, for she was very wet with the previous men’s semen. But intercourse seemed to last an eternity and, bit by bit, she felt her vagina becoming drier. It was a relief when he ejaculated and removed himself.

  Orgy temporarily over, the group relaxed and returned to their drinking and smoking. One after another, they went in and out of the sea, alternating short spells of swimming with longer spells of sunbathing, drinking and smoking. At one point, the older woman invited the local man to have sex with her, which he did. But the group’s orgiastic activity did not really resume for another hour – when the girl announced she wanted the man who had not yet had sex with her. This triggered the rest to claim the same favour from the other woman.

  This time round, however, the frenetic atmosphere had gone. Over the next three hours or so, all five men entered both women and all eventually inseminated them. But no intercourse was rushed; thrusting, when it occurred, was long and slow; on occasion, a man and a woman would stay just coupled together, without thrusting, while they talked, smoked or drank. Often, the men removed themselves without ejaculating, only to resume some time later with whichever female next became free and willing. There was almost continuous sexual activity, but the urgency had evaporated. Gradually, the intervals between coupling grew longer as, one by one, the men ejaculated their last and lost interest in further penetration.

  The last to inseminate the girl was the local man. Thirty minutes previously, one of the others had faded inside her without ejaculating. She had gone for a swim, then returned to the beach to enjoy the last of the day’s sun. It was still hot. Despite all of the afternoon’s activity, her vagina was still hungry. Without a penis, it felt empty. She walked over to the prostrate local and sat astride his stomach, facing away from him so that she could talk to her female friend. Drink and joints were still being passed around, but less enthusiastically than before.

  As she and the woman conversed, the girl’s hands idly played with the young man’s penis. When eventually it hardened she impaled herself. It was a sense of completeness, not excitement, that she felt when he was inside her. They stayed like that for about ten minutes – she conversing with the woman, he lying on his back and smoking. All the time, despite their other activities, their bodies were making subliminal movements, producing a tiny, gentle, but continuous thrusting of his penis inside her. This sensation was just what she wanted. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, her feelings changed – she noticed the tingle of a potential orgasm. She responded first by rocking on his penis more vigorously, then by reaching down to massage her clitoris. He, in his turn, gradually increased his thrusting. At first, as sensations mounted, she closed her eyes. Then, for the second time that afternoon she stared into the eyes of the woman in front of her. The woman urged her on, then at just the right moment bent forward and began kissing her thigh. The girl climaxed, and within seconds so did the man.

  An hour later, when the sun disappeared behind the cliff, the group began the long haul back up. They were all tired, both from their sexual exertions and from their various drugs. But adrenaline fired them into activity when they arrived back at the lay-by to find that their cars had gone. What they didn’t know was that they had been stolen by the lads who had watched them arrive at the beach, hours earlier.

  The loss of their transport in such a backwater was devastating. The cars had been their travelling homes and had contained all their luggage, as well as their passports and money. It took an hour to walk to the nearest village, and then another hour of phone calls by their local friend to alert the police and arrange a lift back to the next town.

  Without their passports they had immediate trouble with the local bureaucracy, not least when they tried to obtain money. In the end they had to borrow some cash from their local friend, just enough to spend the next two days hitch-hiking to the nearest city where they could get new passports. They snatched sleep when and where they could. It was while they were all cramped in the back of a lorry that the woman first noticed how unusually withdrawn the girl had become. When pressed, she explained that her contraceptive pills had been in the luggage but that everybody had been so preoccupied with passports that she hadn’t liked to mention it. The woman had no such problem herself: as they all knew, she had been having unprotected sex with many different men for ten years now and was totally convince
d of her infertility. But she immediately worried for her friend. They planned to do something about it in the city, but the time taken to get their passports and deal with the bureaucracy, the language problems and their tiredness made them decide to wait until they were back on the coast.

  As soon as they returned, the girl recruited the help of the local man, the first and last to inseminate her on the beach four days earlier. It was a further day before she managed to get hold of a new packet of pills. By then, the two cars but not the luggage had been recovered by the police – and the girl was pregnant. The sperm war between five different armies that had taken place inside her had produced a winner.

  In Scenes 18 to 20 we discussed the problems women face in selecting a mate. But in the scene we have just witnessed the two women seem to give up all attempt at mate choice in favour of wanton promiscuity. What circumstances could favour such abandoned behaviour from the point of view of a woman’s reproductive success, and what are the repercussions likely to be?

  In most societies, relatively few people take part in an orgy in their lifetime, perhaps no more than 1 per cent according to a recent British survey of nearly four thousand women. Occasionally, however, such behaviour is more common. The classic examples, of course, are historical – for instance, the well documented orgies of ancient Rome. Anthropologically, there are some societies that have ritualised orgies, particularly for adolescents, in addition to those that may occur spontaneously. Taken as a whole, extreme orgiastic behaviour is relatively uncommon, but in a less extreme form equivalent behaviour is not so unusual.

  At one extreme is an orgy in which a woman, as in Scene 21, allows several men to inseminate her not only within a short length of time but also in each other’s presence. At the other extreme is conventional infidelity in which a woman allows two men to inseminate her over a slightly longer time span and not in each other’s presence. At both extremes, what the woman is doing is essentially the same. Having selected two or more men (by the criteria we discussed in Scene 18) as suitable genetic fathers for her next child, she calls their sperm to battle. This ensures that her child will inherit not only all the other qualities she has selected, but also the genes for the production of a competitive ejaculate. As long as this latter benefit outweighs any associated costs, such as a greater risk of disease from having sex with two men instead of one, she will gain from her behaviour.

  At first sight it might seem that such a strategy only works if the woman conceives a son. After all, a daughter will not produce an ejaculate, competitive or not. And to some extent this is correct – the sex of the child does make some difference to the woman’s gain. But not much, because both sons and daughters will inherit genes, to be passed on to their grandsons, great-grandsons and so on, for all the qualities the woman has selected in the man who wins the war – including his genes for a competitive ejaculate. The only bonus from having a son is that the woman will have produced a male descendant with a competitive ejaculate in the very next generation.

  In pursuing this strategy, a woman encounters a major problem – the men she selects to compete will rarely be given an equal chance to demonstrate their prowess at sperm warfare, because when the time interval between inseminations is relatively long, the outcome of that warfare is determined more by when she ovulates than by the competitiveness of the two armies. In Scene 6 we saw that if the woman’s partner had inseminated her just a few hours earlier, he would have won rather than lost the war. Not because his army would have been any more or less competitive, but simply because his sudden flood of new sperm would have reached the egg just in time, rather than just too late.

  The closer together in time a woman can procure ejaculates from different men, the better she tests their ejaculates’ competitiveness. The ultimate would be if two inseminates could be mixed together in the seminal pool before any sperm were allowed to leave. Then the ejaculates would have exactly equal opportunities, and victory would go to the more competitive. But this could only happen if a woman had two men’s penises in her vagina at the same time and both ejaculated simultaneously. Maybe this does sometimes happen – but not often enough to be discussed seriously.

  Interestingly, this problem of timing can be turned to a woman’s advantage. By adjusting the interval between inseminations by different men, she can bias the competition to favour either ejaculate competitiveness or the men’s other qualities. Essentially, the closer together she allows different men to inseminate her, the more weight she gives to the competitiveness of their ejaculates; the further apart, the more weight she gives to their other qualities (especially if her body times ovulation to favour the man whose qualities she prefers). Always, no matter how much she biases the competition in favour of one male, another male can still win if his ejaculate is sufficiently competitive.

  Most often, when a woman pursues a sperm warfare strategy there are hours or even days between inseminations by different men. A British survey in the late 1980s showed that, in a lifetime (by the time they have had three thousand inseminations), about 80 per cent of women have had sex with two different men within five days; 69 per cent within one day; 13 per cent within an hour; and 1 per cent within thirty minutes. This suggests that, most often, women have clear preferences based on the qualities discussed in Scene 18. Nevertheless, the survey also suggests that on occasion women do give priority to ejaculate competitiveness.

  In Scene 21 the two women allowed, even encouraged, two or three different men to inseminate them within minutes. They also allowed five different men to inseminate them within a few hours. These women had selected five potential fathers for their children. Now, by having sex with all five in such a short space of time, they were giving as much priority as they could to the competitiveness of the men’s ejaculates.

  At first glance it might seem strange, from the viewpoint of reproductive success, that the woman in the scene who suspected she was infertile nevertheless pursued a sperm warfare strategy just as enthusiastically as the younger girl. We might have expected that she had little to gain from putting ejaculates in competition. We might also have expected that, knowing her suspicions, the men would be less interested in inseminating her than the girl. There was some indication of the latter, but not much. And what difference there was could have been due simply to the girl being the younger of the two (Scene 18). But the fact remains that on the whole everybody behaved as if the woman was fertile, including the woman herself. Why?

  The explanation is that nobody really knew whether the woman was infertile or not. She may have been, of course – one of the costs of having many sexual partners is a greater risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease, and one of the costs of a sexually transmitted disease can be infertility (over 50 per cent of infertility cases are a result of such disease). Even so, despite her suspicions she may still have been fertile. Natural contraception (Scene 16) can make a woman appear to be infertile, maybe for years. But then, with the right man in the right circumstances, she may conceive.

  Whether the woman in the scene was infertile or not, her behaviour will have been unaffected. All her body can do in its pursuit of reproductive success is assume that it really is just a question of being inseminated by the right man at the right time, and motivate her accordingly. Failure to conceive may even make a woman more likely to behave like the woman in the scene. Not many seemingly infertile women take this promiscuous route to conception, but some do. The woman’s behaviour was just as much a reflection of her body’s pursuit of reproductive success as was that of the fertile younger girl. So too was their bisexuality (Scene 31).

  By taking part in an orgy, the two women were testing the men as much as possible for differences in prowess at sperm warfare. Although in large part this prowess will depend on the competitiveness of their ejaculates, a number of other factors will inevitably have influenced it – some more than others.

  At first sight, for example, some intercourse positions might seem to be better for sperm
retention than others – in which case, males who manage to engineer the best position will have most sperm retained and thus most chance of winning the war. As it happens, coupling position probably makes little difference to the eventual outcome. The seminal pool is deposited at the top of the vagina no matter which position is adopted. As we saw earlier, the pool stays there as the penis is withdrawn, partly because it quickly coagulates around the cervix and partly because the vagina closes behind the withdrawing penis, holding the pool in place. Only in the woman-on-top position is there a danger that part of the pool may be lost before sperm have had time to escape into the cervix. Even then, this is only a danger if the man withdraws too quickly after insemination.

  Not only does coupling position have little influence on the retention of the seminal pool, it also has little if any influence on the ability of sperm to leave the pool and proceed to the cervix. This is because of the cervix’s neat design. In the missionary position, for example, the pool is deposited on the floor of the vagina with the cervix dipping into it (Scene 3). In the rear entry position, the cervix is either underneath the seminal pool, like a plughole in a sink, or it sticks up and hangs back down, like a coiled spring ‘walking’ downstairs. In the woman-on-top position, the cervix sticks out sideways and hangs down into the pool. Moreover, no matter how a woman changes her position after insemination, gravity will ensure that even a coagulated pool of semen will slide into a new position. Gravity will also ensure that her cervix continues to dangle into the pool, maintaining contact between mucus and semen.